Commentary on Jeremiah 4.57–5.6

[57] "I did not send the prophets, yet they ran; I did not speak to them, yet they prophesied. If they had stood in my counsel and made my words known to my people, I would surely have turned them from their evil way and from their most wicked thoughts." The apostle too explains this sense to the Romans: "And since they did not see fit to have God in their knowledge, God gave them up to a reprobate mind, to do what is not fitting, filled with all iniquity, malice, sexual immorality, wickedness, avarice," and the rest. For when false teachers have once given themselves up to lies, perjuries, and the deaths of those they deceive, they run headlong to destruction, not step by step and with considered pace, and they thirst for the destruction of those they have deceived too; nor does the Lord speak to them, but they themselves speak as if from the Lord's mouth. Of them it is said: "If they had stood in my counsel (that is, if they had been willing to submit to my will) and had made my words known to my people, not flattering them and destroying them by adulation, saying: You have no sins, you possess perfect righteousness; holiness, chastity, and righteousness are found in you alone, I too would not have handed them over to uncleanness and disgrace, to do what is not fitting and follow their most wicked thoughts." Let us observe the heretics, how, once they despair of salvation, they give themselves to gluttony and pleasures, eat meat, frequent the baths, smell of musk, and, smeared with various ointments, seek beauty of body. For they do not hope for the things to come nor believe in the resurrection; what they do not reveal in speech they show in deeds; for if they believed, they would not do these things. And in this place, where it is written, "If they had stood in my counsel," Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion, and the Seventy all translated alike, as above. [58] "Am I a God near at hand, says the Lord, and not a God far off? If a man hides in secret places, shall I not see him? says the Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth? says the Lord." The Seventy: "I am a God drawing near, says the Lord, and not a God far off. If a man is hidden in secret places, shall I not see him? says the Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth? says the Lord." Aquila and Symmachus interpreted alike: "Am I a God from near at hand (or: nearby) and not a God from far off?" But the Seventy and Theodotion rendered in a contrary sense, saying, "I am a God drawing near, says the Lord, and not a God far off"; that is, the former assert that God knows not only what is near but also what is far, and sees not only the present but the future; while these hold that God is present everywhere and there is no place where God is not present. For God draws near to all, and especially to the saints, as a garment clings to the skin; but sinners, withdrawing far from him, will perish. This sense we read in the Psalms too: "Where shall I go from your Spirit, and where shall I flee from your face? If I ascend into heaven, you are there; if I descend into hell, you are present; if I take my wings at dawn and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand will lead me and your right hand will hold me." Amos also agrees with these words, saying: "If they go down to hell, from there my hand will bring them out; and if they go up to heaven, from there I will drag them down; and if they hide on the top of Carmel, from there I will search them out and take them; and if they conceal themselves from my eyes in the depth of the sea, there I will command the serpent and it will bite them." And again in the psalm above: "For darkness," he says, "will not be dark to you, and the night will be lit as the day; as is its darkness, so also its light." As for the frequent phrase in the prophets, "Thus says the Lord," it is always added so that they may not be despised as words of the prophets, but that the hearers may be continually reminded that the words they speak are God's.

[59] "I have heard what the prophets have said who prophesy a lie in my name, saying: I have dreamed, I have dreamed (or: I have seen a dream). How long is this in the heart of the prophets who prophesy a lie and prophesy the seductions (or: the wishes) of their own heart? who want (or: think) to make my people forget my name because of their dreams, which each tells to his neighbor, as their fathers forgot my name because of Baal" (or: "in Baal"). Because the preceding title is against the prophets, or to the prophets, whom we clearly understand as false prophets (there are many kinds of prophesying, one of which is by dreams, such as that in Daniel), therefore the prophetic word is directed also to those who believe dreams and think that everything they see is a divine revelation, which is properly opened to the saints and servants of God. And if we read that Pharaoh and Nebuchadnezzar, impious kings, saw dreams that were true, it was not by the merit of those who saw them, but so that by their occasion the holy men Joseph and Daniel might become famous, and the hard and untamable hearts of the tyrants might feel the Lord's majesty in their own conscience. There are dreamers even today in the church, and especially in our flock, who boast of their errors as prophecy of the Lord and keep pressing on us: "I have dreamed, I have dreamed"; whom the Lord rebukes, saying: "How long is this in the heart of the prophets who prophesy a lie and prophesy the seductions of their own heart? They do this so that, as the ancient people that came out of Egypt forgot the name of God, so their descendants also may forget me." Prophesying of this kind is not in the name of the Lord but in the name of Baal, which is properly an idol of the Sidonians, or Babylonian, and is called by a neighboring name Bel.

[60] "The prophet who has a dream, let him tell the dream; and he who has my word, let him speak my word truly! What has chaff to do with wheat? says the Lord. Are not my words like fire, says the Lord, and like a hammer (or: an axe) that breaks the rock?" It belongs to those to expound a dream who deserve to have God's word and to say "Thus says the Lord," to whom the Lord has spoken, in whom is truth and not deceitful falsehood. What do the heretics' chaff have to do with the church's wheat? Of which John the Baptist speaks more fully: that Christ will clean his threshing floor and with his winnowing fork leave the chaff to be scattered by the blasts of the winds and burned with fire, but will store the wheat in barns, so that it may become heavenly bread and each of the believers may say: "Taste and see that the Lord is sweet!" And perverse doctrine is finely compared to chaff, which has no kernel and cannot nourish the peoples of believers, but is crushed from empty stalks. And because heretics always promise prosperity and open the kingdom of heaven to sinners, so as to say: "The kingdom of heaven is prepared for you; you can imitate God's majesty, so as to be without sin; for you have received the power of free choice and the knowledge of the law, through which you may attain what you will"; and they deceive the wretched with flatteries, and especially silly women laden with sins, who are carried about by every wind of doctrine, always learning and never coming to the knowledge of the truth, and they deceive all their hearers by adulation; therefore the Lord, comparing his words with the chaff of the heretics, says: "Are not my words like fire, says the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks the rock? For my word," he says, "announces future punishments, to deter men from sinning." And he threatens burning to the chaff of sinners, so that the hearts of the heretics, hard and untamable like flint, may be broken by the hammer of his word, taking away the heart of stone to put in its place a heart of flesh, that is, soft and able to receive and feel God's commands. The Lord says something similar through Ezekiel: that the false prophets with their flatteries daub a wall without proper mortar, which afterwards is overthrown by a violent rain and the truth of judgment; and the false prophetesses sew cushions under every elbow of the hand, so as to make sinners rest and never appease God's wrath with tears. For "hammer" the Seventy interpreted "axe," that, namely, of which John the Baptist speaks: "Already the axe is laid at the roots of the trees." This axe cuts down unfruitful trees, and this hammer breaks the hardest stones. Hence the prophet Nahum too says: "His fury (doubtless God's) will consume principalities, and the rocks will be broken by him." This is against the heretics; but of churchmen it is written that hammer and axe were not heard in the house of God.

[61] "Therefore, behold, I am against the prophets, says the Lord, who steal my words, each from his neighbor. Behold, I am against the prophets, says the Lord, who take their tongues and say: He says (or: who slumber a slumber). Behold, I am against the prophets who dream a lie, says the Lord, who tell them and lead my people astray by their lies and their marvels (or: astonishments and terrors), when I did not send them nor command them, who have not profited this people at all, says the Lord." Falsehood always imitates truth, and unless it has some likeness of what is right, it cannot deceive the innocent. As, then, among the former people the prophets lied and said, "Thus says the Lord," and "I saw the Lord," and "The word of the Lord that came to him" (or: to that one), so the heretics take testimonies of the Scriptures from the Old and New Testament and steal the Savior's words, each from his neighbor, from prophets, apostles, and evangelists; and they take their tongues to utter with the mouth the poison of the heart; and they slumber a slumber (of whom it is truly said, "They have slept their sleep and have found nothing"), or, according to the Hebrew, "and they say: He says," so that "the Lord" is understood, or certainly "the divine word." The Lord threatens, then, that he himself will come against teachers of this kind, who lead his people astray by their lies and by astonishments and marvels. For they promise great, incredible, and enormous things to lead the wretched astray; they have not profited God's people at all and fulfill the apostle's words, "teaching what they ought not, for the sake of shameful gain"; they are accustomed to announce prosperity to the wicked and adversity to the good.

[62] "If then this people, or a prophet or a priest, asks you, saying: What is the burden of the Lord (or: what is the taking up of the Lord)? you shall say to them: You are the burden (or: the taking up); for I will cast you off (or: dash you down), says the Lord. And the prophet and the priest and the people who say: The burden (or: taking up) of the Lord, I will visit (or: punish) upon that man and upon his house. Thus shall each say to his friend and to his brother: What has the Lord answered, and what has the Lord spoken? And the burden (or: taking up) of the Lord shall no longer be mentioned, for each man's own word shall be his burden (or: taking up)." The Hebrew word massa Aquila interprets arma, that is, "burden" and "weight"; Symmachus, the Seventy, and Theodotion "taking up." Wherever, then, what the Lord threatens is heavy, full of weight and toil and unbearable, in the title too it is called arma, that is, "weight"; but wherever the Lord promises prosperity, or after a threat promises better things, there it is called "vision" or certainly "the word of the Lord"; and it was plain from the very title of the prophecy, "weight" or "vision" and "word of God," what sort of prophecy would follow. Because, then, the prophets used to announce sad things to the sinful people and threaten punishments, to draw them back to repentance, while the Lord, merciful and compassionate, put off the sentence for a long time, the people, deceived and led astray by the fraud of the false prophets, thought that what the Lord threatened would not come, and had turned a severe matter into play and jest, and said mockingly to the prophets when they prophesied: "Here again he sees a weight and burden of the Lord." And so it came about that it was no longer called "vision" but, in jest and derision, "burden" and "weight." The Lord commands, then, that whether the people or a prophet or a priest asks Jeremiah what the weight or taking up of the Lord is, he should answer them and say: "You are the burden and the taking up; for I will take you up and cast you off and dash you down and make you perish. And if anyone hereafter, of prophets, priests, or people, dares to name the burden and weight of the Lord, I will visit," he says, "upon that man and upon his house and destroy him forever." Let each say, then, to his neighbor and friend, not "What is the burden of the Lord?" but "What has the Lord answered, and what has the Lord spoken? Forget the old saying; let burden and weight, or taking up, no longer sound in your mouth, for to each person his own word and his own work will be reckoned as burden and weight," according to what is written: "By your mouth you will be justified, and by your mouth you will be condemned."

[63] "And you have perverted the words of the living God, the Lord of hosts, our God. Thus shall you say (or: you shall say) to the prophet: What has the Lord answered you, and what has the Lord spoken? But if you say: The burden of the Lord" (up to here it is not in the Seventy); and there follows: "therefore thus says the Lord: Because you have said this word, The burden (or: taking up) of the Lord, and I sent to you saying, Do not say, The burden (or: taking up) of the Lord, therefore, behold, I will take you up (or: lift you up) and carry you and abandon you, and the city which I gave to you and your fathers, from my face; and I will give you to everlasting reproach and eternal disgrace, which will never be blotted out by forgetting." The Lord commanded that the word "burden," "weight," and "taking up" should no longer be spoken among the people, but "answer" and "word of God." Because the people had disdained to fulfill this, he interprets the word itself against them and says: "Since you have said what I did not want, and that when I often sent prophets and commanded you not to say it, therefore I will fulfill in deed upon you your word of taking up, burden, and weight; for I will take you up and lift and carry you and dash you down and make you fall from on high to the ground (and not only you, but also your city, which I gave to your fathers); and I will give you," he says, "to reproach and everlasting disgrace, which will never be blotted out by forgetting." We know that this happened at the time of the Babylonian captivity too; but it is fulfilled more fully and perfectly after the Savior's passion and resurrection, when the Lord said: "Your house will be left to you desolate." And his sentence will remain to the end. Let us also speak otherwise, at least according to the Seventy: lēmma means not only "taking up" but also "gift" and "present." Because the people always promised themselves prosperity, he says they should no longer say this; for they are unworthy of God's gifts and presents, and rather to be cast off and wholly abandoned by God's help. By words and the interpretation of names things are often shown, as the changed names of Abraham, Sarah, Peter, and the sons of Zebedee signify a change of things; and in this same prophet Phaschor is called "terror" or "removal," and "settler" or "stranger." It should be noted that the words "of the living God, the Lord of hosts, our God" the Latin and Greek manuscripts do not have, and the Hebrews read in their scrolls against themselves, because it properly signifies the mystery of the Trinity.

Book Five. [1] The fifth book of commentaries on Jeremiah, brother Eusebius, will begin with two baskets, one of which will show the sweetness of the right faith, the other the bitterness of the heretics' faithlessness. Although Hananiah son of Azzur resists Jeremiah, and Shemaiah the Nehelamite desires that the prophet be put in prison, and Zephaniah the priest swears to the words of the false prophets, yet the truth can be shut up and bound, but cannot be conquered; it is content with the fewness of its own and is not frightened by the multitude of its enemies. Lift up your hands to heaven, then, with Moses, and hang the ancient serpent up in the desert, and at once Amalek will be destroyed and the poisonous bites will not prevail, and the Lord's people will cross the streams of the Jordan safely with Jesus, and after the vast wilderness will eat the bread that was born in our little village of Bethlehem. [2] "The Lord showed me, and behold, two baskets (or, according to Symmachus, hampers) full of figs, set before the temple of the Lord, after Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon had carried away Jeconiah son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, and his princes and the craftsman and the engraver from Jerusalem, and brought them to Babylon. One basket had very good figs, like the figs of the first season, and one basket had very bad figs, which could not be eaten because they were bad. And the Lord said to me: What do you see, Jeremiah? And I said: Figs; the good figs very good, and the bad very bad, which cannot be eaten because they are bad. And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Like these good figs, so will I regard the exiles of Judah, whom I have sent out from this place into the land of the Chaldeans, for good. And I will set my eyes on them for good and bring them back to this land, and I will build them up and not tear them down, and plant them and not uproot them. And I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the Lord; and they shall be my people and I will be their God, for they will return to me with their whole heart. And like the very bad figs, which cannot be eaten because they are bad, thus says the Lord, so will I give (or: hand over) Zedekiah king of Judah and his princes and the remnant of Jerusalem who have remained in this city and those who dwell in the land of Egypt; and I will give them to vexation and affliction (or: dispersion) to all the kingdoms of the earth, to reproach and to a parable and a proverb and a curse in all the places to which I have driven them. And I will send against them the sword and famine and pestilence, until they are consumed from the land which I gave to them and their fathers." Some interpret the two hampers or baskets of good and bad figs as the law and the gospel, the synagogue and the church, the people of the Jews and of the Christians, hell and the kingdom of heaven, one of which belongs to the punishment of sinners, the other to the dwelling of the saints. But we, knowing according to the apostle Paul that the law is good and holy and the commandment good and holy, and that there is one God of both Testaments, should refer it rather to those who at the coming of the Lord and Savior believed in him and did not believe: so that those who, incited by the scribes and priests, cried out, "Crucify, crucify such a one," are the basket of bad figs; but those of the people who believed after his ascension are referred to the good figs and the best basket or hamper. But let us follow the simple and true history: that he called Jeconiah, who had handed himself over to the Babylonian king by Jeremiah's counsel and God's command, the basket of good figs, to whom the Lord also promises prosperity; and Zedekiah the basket of bad figs, who, resisting God's sentence, was captured, blinded, led to Babylon, and died there. God set his eyes (on them) for good, on those who submitted to his command, to such a degree that he brought them back to their land, built them up and did not destroy them, planted and did not uproot them, and gave them a heart to know that he is the Lord, and they became his people and he their God; so that even in captivity he set his eyes on them and allowed them to till the land, build houses, and plant orchards in the region of Babylon, and Daniel was suddenly made a ruler from a captive by the miracles of signs, and the three boys were gloriously freed from the fire of the furnace, and when the seventy years were completed, under Zerubbabel and Jeshua the high priest and Ezra and Nehemiah, the greatest part returned to Jerusalem; their number is contained in the book of the same Ezra. It must also be noted that this vision came to the prophet in the times of Zedekiah, after Jeconiah had been led into "exile"; for he did not say "captivity," because he had handed himself over of his own accord. By craftsmen and engravers we should understand either interpreters and teachers of the law, or workers and engravers of gold and jewelry, an art most prized among barbarian nations. For "engravers" the Seventy interpreted "prisoners," to signify the evil of captivity, and on their own account added "the rich," which is not in the Hebrew. He compares the basket that had good figs, and very good ones, to figs of the first season, which in Greek are called prodroma: namely Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Job, and the other holy men, of whom one of the twelve prophets says: "Like grapes in the desert I found Israel, and like figs on the fig tree I found their fathers"; hence we too are called sons of Abraham, and on the contrary it is said to the Jews: "If Abraham were your father, you would do his works." These baskets, which had good and bad figs, were not outside the church but before the Lord's temple, because everything lies open to his knowledge. And the figs that are outside do not have as much bitterness as those that have been changed by transgression after confessing the faith; nor do the good figs that are not in sight of God's temple (such as the philosophers of the world were, who strove not so much to follow as to praise the virtues by natural goodness and understanding of the Creator) have as much sweetness as the figs that are in God's temple, such as the prophets and apostles were, of whom one fig said: "I gave you milk, not solid food," and: "My little children, with whom I am again in labor until Christ is formed in you." Hence it is said that in sight of God's temple the good figs were very good and the bad figs very bad. And so that we may not seem to impose our own sense, Scripture explains itself: "Like these good figs," he says, "so will I regard the exiles of Judah, whom I have sent out from this place into the land of the Chaldeans, for good," signifying Jeconiah and the princes who were captured with him; and on the contrary of the basket that had bad figs: "And like the very bad figs," he says, "which cannot be eaten because they are bad, so will I give Zedekiah king of Judah and his princes, and those who fled to Egypt and those who remained in this city, to vexation and affliction in all the kingdoms of the earth"; when they were captured in Egypt too, and Nebuchadnezzar set his throne in Tahpanhes, and the Lord sent against them the sword, famine, and pestilence, until they were consumed from the land which he gave to their fathers. And what he said of the good figs, "I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the Lord," is like the apostle's saying, "It is God who works in you both to will and to accomplish," because not only our works but also our will rests on God's help. In this place the ever-allegorical interpreter raves, and, wishing to do violence to the historical truth, refers to those captured from the heavenly Jerusalem and carried into the land of the Chaldeans, who will return again to their former place, such as Jeremiah and the other holy prophets; while others, who were sinners, will die in this land and in the valley of tears. I have set out the whole vision together, so as not to divide the sense in the exposition. [3] "The word that came to Jeremiah concerning all the people of Judea (or: upon all the people of Judah) in the fourth year of Jehoiakim son of Josiah, king of Judah." These events come before the previous vision; for that was in the time of Zedekiah, after Jeconiah had been carried to Babylon, but these under Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah and father of Jeconiah. For, as I have already said, the prophecy took no care to keep the times, which the laws of history require, but to write whatever it knew to be useful to its hearers and readers; hence some wrongly look for the order of the psalms in the Psalter according to the sequence of history, which is not observed in a lyric poem.

[4] "That was the first year of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon" (which is not in the Seventy); and there follows: "which Jeremiah the prophet spoke to all the people of Judah and to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, saying." In the fourth year of King Jehoiakim son of Josiah, father of Jeconiah, Nebuchadnezzar took power in Babylon; and so it came about that the year which was Nebuchadnezzar's first in Babylon was King Jehoiakim's fourth in Jerusalem. Then in the eighth year of his reign he led into captivity Jeconiah with his mother and princes, who had reigned only three months after the killing of his father Jehoiakim. Jehoiakim was killed in the eleventh year of his reign in Jerusalem.

[5] "From the thirteenth year of Josiah son of Amon, king of Judah, to this day, this is the twenty-third year, the word of the Lord has come to me, and I have spoken to you, rising early and speaking, and you have not listened." In the thirteenth year of the reign of Josiah, who reigned thirty-one years in Jerusalem, Jeremiah began to prophesy, and he prophesied under him nineteen years. His son Jehoahaz succeeded him in the kingdom; when he was at once led into captivity by Necho, the Egyptian king, his brother Jehoiakim obtained the kingdom, in the fourth year of whose reign this word of the Lord comes to Jeremiah. And so it was the twenty-third year of the prophet Jeremiah since he began to speak to the people, and he never ceased to preach, but every day, rising at dawn and by night, he spoke to the people; "and you have not listened," he says. But if, as the new heretics, sprung from the old, would have it, the law was given once for all as a help, and commandments were set which we do or do not do by the will of our own choice, how is it that the prophet always presses himself on them and daily repeats God's commandments, which, once received, would have been enough for those to whom they were given, unless to show that we always need God's help, and that what has been given once can never suffice unless it is renewed daily by the Lord's admonition?

[6] "And the Lord has sent to you all his servants the prophets, rising early and sending; and you have not listened." Not by one prophet but by all God always admonished his people, and as if posted on watch and guard himself, he rose at dawn to warn his people. "And you have not listened," he says; so that the more frequent the admonition, the greater were the sins of those who despised it.